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What even are these people talking about lol?
Roast Beef, Brown Ale, and The (not merely A) Bill of Rights; our tongue celebrates the Yeoman. – StoneyB Feb 14 '14 at 17:41 @StoneyB I think we Yanks would more often recognize the Gentleman Farmer. – bib Feb 14 '14 at 17:55 @bib I may be showing my age and ethnos. My father was a student of Donald Davidson's, and the Fugitives/Southern Agrarians were fond of yeoman for the agricultural class. Gentleman Farmer would probably for them have suggested something quite different: the remnant of the old Planter class. – StoneyB Feb 14 '14 at 18:00 @bib, They're like Big Agriculture, but not actually anywhere near as big, with a stronger fondness for tweed, and a working definition of "old money" of, "before you were throwing your tea into the sea". – Jon Hanna Feb 14 '14 at 18:01 I think it was your tea they were throwing into the sea; but, yeah, Gentleman Farmer to me means the gentry, the squirearchy. – StoneyB Feb 14 '14 at 18:04 @oerkelens I am responding both to you and to Jon Hanna, (+1 to both) indeed to everyone who has collectively supplied important information. However no one mentioned perhaps the most important word of all which was 'enclosures'. The other important word is 'land primogeniture'. It was the enclosures movement which got underway in the 16th century and continued until the 19th which ended the feudal system and concentrated land 'ownership'. Ultimately this meant that average farm sizes were much greater in England, and eventually in her dominions than in France and elsewhere. (Continued) – WS2 Feb 14 '14 at 18:59 @StoneyB - there is a difference between yeomen and peasants. Yeomen are free, peasants are not. – Oldcat Feb 14 '14 at 19:03 @WS2 - the end of Enclosures movement took what was traditionally common land away from use by the poor and made it private property, usually of the wealthy in the area so the poor could no longer use it to supplement their lives. – Oldcat Feb 14 '14 at 19:07 This allowed for farms to be run as commercial enterprises able to take advantage of mechanisation etc. 'Primogeniture' meant 'entailement' of estates, meaning that the eldest son inherited everything, which prevented farms being broken up on death, and ever sub-divided into smaller and smaller holdings. Hence the character of British farming became much more that of entrepreneurship. In Europe 'peasant' holdings continue to the present day, which explains much of the agricultural disconnect between Britain and the EU. In France the 'paysan' is honorable, in Britain they are obsolete. – WS2 Feb 14 '14 at 19:10 @Oldcat At times when the distinction was of legal force, peasant was rarely used in English in that sense; the preferred term was villein -- which is another part of the reason that, as OP observes, peasant tends to be used of non-British agriculturist. – StoneyB Feb 14 '14 at 19:19 @StoneyB Under enclosures the villeins eventually disappear. And mechanisation meant fewer hands needed, which also explains why Britain had an industrial revolution - hordes of spare labour for the 'dark satanic mills', augmented by Irish arriving at the time of the famine. French rural society is quite different, beautifully documented by Emile Zola in La Terre, but if you contrast the scene with that of a British writer, such as Thomas Hardy, it encapsulates the difference between the two systems. So much of the character of the modern Anglo world dates from enclosures. – WS2 Feb 14 '14 at 20:11 @StoneyB Re your Roast Beef, Brown Ale etc. Be careful, you are speaking to an Irishman. They have their own views about wealthy British landowners. – WS2 Feb 14 '14 at 20:20 @bib The first 'Gentlemen farmers' were the inheritors of the entailed estates. It was the concentration of wealth in this way which created the first capitalists. If you follow Downton Abbey, the Granthams are quintessentially the class I'm talking about. But they didn't have a son, and the only heir has been killed leaving a baby son. It was well into the 20th C before entailment disappeared. – WS2 Feb 14 '14 at 20:24 @WS2 1) I think you need to add a third critical term: commutation. 2) I trust Jon Hanna recognizes that my rhetoric is bucally articulated. – StoneyB Feb 14 '14 at 20:24 @StoneyB 1.Yes, by that I assume you mean the conversion of the Church lands after the reformation. 2. 'Bucally' with a single c is a new one on me, as well as on Oxford Dictionaries. Double cc, and it's to do with the mouth? – WS2 Feb 14 '14 at 20:35 @WS2 1)More generally, commutation of feudal service into cash rent, which went on continually from the High Middle Ages down to 1840 or so. 2) Sorry, typo: buccally, specifically of the cheek – StoneyB Feb 14 '14 at 20:57 @WS2 we Irish appreciate beef too, and may well argue in favour of the quality of ours, though I prefer mine cooked after the manner of the French. On the topic of ale, I would have to give the British the prize there until very recently (thankfully there has been a recent ale renaissance here) and the British do still have the better pubs on average, at least as far as what they serve goes. But then, I do consider myself British too, as politically complicated as that might be. – Jon Hanna Feb 14 '14 at 21:02 @JonHanna And I'm sitting here wearing a London Irish rugby jersey (they play at the Reading Football Ground). And the sponsors name emblazoned on it? Who else? GUINNESS. You say we have the better pubs, but they do stay open a bit longer in the Republic, you'll have to admit! – WS2 Feb 14 '14 at 21:10 @Oldcat, strictly, yeomen are free, peasants may not be a yeoman is though owns land, at least for some of the period in which the term has been in use, as the definition has changed over the centuries, even for a while being an American term for someone who owned land but not slaves, and mostly worked it themselves. – Jon Hanna Feb 14 '14 at 21:11 @WS2 I'm too much a gourmand to rate Guinness highly as a stout (originally a drink invented in London), regardless of whether one of the leading financial dynasties of the British Empire stands as particularly Irish or not (I may feel partly British, but that parts a bigger republican than the Irish part). Of course, we both suffer from short drinking hours as the result of said empire thinking it would winning the war against the Kaiser faster if late night drinking water temporarily prohibited, with almost everywhere else taking a much more relaxed approach. – Jon Hanna Feb 14 '14 at 21:18 "it would winning the war"? I've got to stop posting here from my phone. – Jon Hanna Feb 14 '14 at 21:25 @JonHanna As we are a language site, I think I should point out that you are probably a 'gourmet' rather than a 'gourmand'. The latter is a ravenous non-discerning eater (and drinker) who shovels it in; perhaps the sort of person who would down a few pints of Guinness. Last time I was in Ireland (about 12 years ago), touring the west coast, I was amazed at the number of Michelin starred restaurants. The impression I got was that the tourism part of the government were doing their best to make the country a venue for up-market fishing, shooting and golfing holidays. – WS2 Feb 14 '14 at 22:25